Valve announces Steam for Mac, will allow Mac-PC online play
Valve officially revealed Monday that its Steam online gaming service, along with the Source engine that powers titles such as Half-Life 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, is coming to the Mac in April.
Valve's library of games will be making the jump from Windows Machines, including Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series.
"As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services."
Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve, said the partners who sell games through the Steam online service, are "very excited" about embracing the Mac platform. The statement would imply that developers other than Valve intend to make their titles compatible with the Mac.
"Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge," Holtman said. "For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."
In addition, Valve confirmed that the forthcoming Portal 2 game will be the company's first simultaneous release for both Mac and Windows.
"Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, project lead for Portal 2. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, director of Steam development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360.
"Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."
Valve's library of games will be making the jump from Windows Machines, including Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half-Life series.
"As we transition from entertainment as a product to entertainment as a service, customers and developers need open, high-quality Internet clients," said Gabe Newell, president of Valve. "The Mac is a great platform for entertainment services."
Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve, said the partners who sell games through the Steam online service, are "very excited" about embracing the Mac platform. The statement would imply that developers other than Valve intend to make their titles compatible with the Mac.
"Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge," Holtman said. "For example, Steam Play, in combination with the Steam Cloud, allows a gamer playing on their work PC to go home and pick up playing the same game at the same point on their home Mac. We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play."
In addition, Valve confirmed that the forthcoming Portal 2 game will be the company's first simultaneous release for both Mac and Windows.
"Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, project lead for Portal 2. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."
"We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation," said John Cook, director of Steam development. "The inclusion of WebKit into Steam, and of OpenGL into Source gives us a lot of flexibility in how we move these technologies forward. We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac, and the Xbox 360.
"Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies, and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows."
Comments
Great! Now we can play all those 2-year old steam games that actually run on our brand new Macbook Pros and iMacs with Core2Duos.
Yes, because everyone knows i5 and i7 processors and bleeding-edge GPUs are absolutely mandatory for most games today.
Moron.
you have to admit, macbooks have piss-poor 3-d gaming performance.
You have to admit, that most people don't buy notebooks for hardcore gaming, and the GPUs in the MB/MBP is pretty middle-of-the-road for whats on the market right now. If you try to play Crysis on any laptop, you deserve what you get.
I'm starting to get sick of every goddamn thread I read on this site and MacRumors having the topic devolve into a discussion about the supposed 'outdated' hardware in the macbooks. It's getting old. Anyone have any suggestions on forums where people actually talk about the topic at hand instead of having to deal with Wintendo fanboys whining about stupid crap?
Yes, because everyone knows i5 and i7 processors and bleeding-edge GPUs are absolutely mandatory for most games today.
Moron.
well, getting 400fps in the HalfLife 2 test is pretty sweet on a new iMac i5. Sure beats the 40fps on the 2 year old machine.
Would these be PC only?
Valve games really are some of the best games out there and the fact that I won't have to re-buy them is absolutely fantastic (since I already own them all). Even better is that HL2 runs on even the most moderate system so I bet those nvidia 9400s in the macbooks will be able to handle most of those games at reduced settings.
Now all three, in my opinion, best game companies produces games for the mac.
The other two great ones are id Software and Blizzard Entertainment.
AWESOME! This is a great step forward for mac gaming.
Now all three, in my opinion, best game companies produces games for the mac.
The other two great ones are id Software and Blizzard Entertainment.
Add Epic to that list and we're all good. Unreal engine is used in a lot of good shooters.
Yes, because everyone knows i5 and i7 processors and bleeding-edge GPUs are absolutely mandatory for most games today.
Moron.
Moron? Ease up killer. Fast processors and GPUs certainly help...
(i've always wondered if apple would see to spend some of their billions to acquire valve... it made sense from a distribution perspective before - and now from a content perspective too.)
I hope news games like Empire Total War etc come out eventually too!
I pre-ordered Empire after becoming a Rome addict. BIGGEST. MISTAKE. EVER. CA shafted all of its fanbase with this broken game, and things only got worse when they dropped ETW support and announced that 60% of the ETW promised features that never came to be would be on Napoleon: for $50 more.
I don't really know what to think of Steam (the thing has given me some head aches), but as long as this means more NATIVE Mac games, horaay!
Hopefully this means one day I won't need a Windows partition to play games anymore...
The servers are empty...
...NOT!
Great! Now we can play all those 2-year old steam games that actually run on our brand new Macbook Pros and iMacs with Core2Duos.
Moron? Ease up killer. Fast processors and GPUs certainly help...
But aren't necessary and put you on a treadmill of upgrades that make the cost of Macs pale into insignificance.
Not even close. The "upgrade costs are more than the apple premium" argument is specious. You could buy multiple video card upgrades in the 3 years or so you use the box and still be well under the cost of an iMac that was similarly equipped to start with and cannot be upgraded in any meaningful way to keep up.